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Film Review Goodbye Lenin (2003

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The story of what happens to a staunch socialist East German mother and her family when the Berlin Wall falls in 1989. Their father had deserted them to the West years earlier. The mother has a heart attack and collapses into a coma after seeing her teenage son arrested in the October 1989 protest. She is hospitalized, leaving her two children to deal with the political upheaval and rapid lifestyle change. Her unmarried daughter, with one child, drops out of college taking a job at a new fast food restaurant. She takes her manager as her lover. He moves in with them. Her son, who gets a job in TV satellite installation, finds a lover in his mother’s young nurse, a Russian émigré. When the mother finally emerges from her coma six months later, they are told she must have no excitement due to her heart condition. In order to bring her home, the son does everything possible to keep his mother calm by not telling her about the regime change. The unbelievable lengths he goes to protect her from learning of the change include refurnishing her room with old items they had discarded, putting new food brands in old no longer available product jars and making dummy news videos to show her on TV, as well as having her birthday party with old friends who also pretend nothing has changed. The effects of the change in government are shown. The plot becomes more complicated at the end when another lie is confessed by the mother and the family dynamics shift abruptly. It is a heartwarming story, showing the impact on the ordinary people of a major governmental change caused by the sudden unification of Germany. Director: Wolfgang Becker Writer: Bernd Lichtenberg and Wolfgang Becker Studio: X-Filme Creative Pool Germany Stars: Daniel Bruhl Katrin Sass Chulpan Khamatona Rating: R Color Running Time: 121 minutes Rating 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8